Prosecutors Close Their Case at One Sniper Trial

By JAMES DAO

Published: November 11, 2003

VIRGINIA BEACH, Nov. 10 — The prosecution rested its case against John A. Muhammad on Monday, asserting that he had devised and directed a scheme of serial killings intended to terrorize the Washington area and extort $10 million from local governments.

The prosecution's last six witnesses testified that the shooting spree, in which 10 people were killed last fall and 3 seriously wounded, had disrupted activities and spread fear in hundreds of schools, perplexed local and federal authorities for weeks and cost businesses in northern Virginia $55 million in sales.

Edward A. Clarke, the director of school safety in Montgomery County, Md., said the sight of F.B.I. helicopters hovering protectively over schools had left him, his staff and students with "an eerie feeling and sense of uncertainty."

"You had to see that sight," Mr. Clarke said, "to really see the effect on not only these students but the parents and staff members."

With his final question to his final witness, Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert elicited what might be the prosecution's simplest yet most compelling piece of evidence. Had there been any sniper shootings since Mr. Muhammad and Lee Malvo, the teenager charged as his accomplice, were arrested on Oct. 24, 2002, Mr. Ebert asked.

Over the last three weeks, the prosecution called more than 130 witnesses and introduced more than 400 pieces of evidence intended to prove that Mr. Muhammad had undertaken the shooting spree and ordered Mr. Malvo to help carry it out.

But the prosecution never introduced direct evidence that Mr. Muhammad had killed anyone. Instead, it methodically assembled bits of evidence intended to leave the inescapable impression that he had been at the center of the killings.

That evidence included a rifle, found in Mr. Muhammad's car, that has been linked by ballistics tests not only to 8 of the 10 killings in the Washington area but also to 2 others, in Louisiana and Alabama; the car itself, which was modified, prosecutors say, so that a sniper could shoot from inside the trunk; and a laptop computer, also found in the car, that contained maps with icons pinpointing shooting scenes.

There were also witness accounts that put Mr. Muhammad across the street from one shooting and his car near the scene of several others. And there was a recorded phone call to a police hot line in which a man, his voice identified by a detective as Mr. Muhammad's, demanded money in exchange for stopping the shootings.

"Certainly this is a circumstantial case," said Mr. Ebert, the prosecutor. "But I would submit to the court that it would be hard to imagine any more circumstances possible that demonstrate he was guilty of being the actual perpetrator of the killing of Dean Meyers."

Mr. Muhammad, 42, is charged with capital murder in the shooting of Mr. Meyers at a gas station in Manassas. Mr. Malvo, 18, went on trial on Monday in Chesapeake, near Virginia Beach, charged with killing Linda Franklin in Falls Church. Both men face the death penalty if convicted.

Mr. Muhammad's lawyers are to begin presenting their case to the jury when the trial resumes on Wednesday. But they began outlining their arguments on Monday, once the jurors had been dismissed for the day, in asking the judge to dismiss all capital murder charges.

Peter Greenspun, one of the defense lawyers, said the absence of any direct evidence that Mr. Muhammad had killed anyone meant that capital murder charges must be thrown out.

Mr. Malvo's fingerprints were on the Bushmaster rifle found in Mr. Muhammad's car, and genetic material from Mr. Muhammad himself was also discovered on the rifle. But the defense contends that Mr. Muhammad cannot be put to death under Virginia's so-called triggerman law unless he actually pulled the trigger to kill Mr. Meyers, and no one has testified that they saw him do so.

Mr. Greenspun also attacked the prosecution's use of a new state antiterrorism law, arguing that the Legislature had intended it to apply to hierarchical organizations like Al Qaeda. That law authorizes death sentences for those who order killings to intimidate communities or influence governments, whether or not they kill anyone themselves.

The prosecution asserts that Mr. Muhammad ran a terrorist killing team of two, and introduced evidence to show that he had controlled Mr. Malvo like a father. But Mr. Greenspun argued that the mere fact that Mr. Muhammad was a father figure to a fatherless teenager was no evidence of a terrorist plot.

The judge, LeRoy F. Millette Jr. of Prince William County Circuit Court, said he would rule on the dismissal motion on Wednesday.